Microsoft's Share in Smartphone OS Market Drops

Google's Android mobile operating system is now the highest-selling smartphone OS in the United States, having overtaken Research In Motion's BlackBerry OS, according to a comScore report released Monday.

Just over three months after its launch and with an 8.0 percent share of the market, Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 is fourth in the rankings. It trails Android, which claims 31.2 percent of the market; RIM, with 30.4 percent of the market; and Apple, with 24.7 percent of the market. At the bottom of the list is Palm, which has a 3.2 percent market share.

ComScore, a digital analytic and research company, studied the overall smartphone sales for the three-month period between October 2010 and January 2011 to find that in just 27 months on the market, Android devices have shot to the No. 1 spot -- faster than any other mobile OS. Between October and January, total smartphone subscribers of Google's mobile offering jumped by 7.7 percent.

In contrast, Microsoft's share of smartphone subscribers dropped by 1.7 percent, RIM's fell by 5.4 percent, and Palm's declined by 0.7 percent. Apple's share over the three-month period covered in the report increased, but by a marginal 0.1 percent.

As for individual device manufacturer results, Samsung held on to its top spot and increased its mobile subscriber base by 0.7 percent to gain 24.9 percent market share. Samsung is the largest manufacturer of Android devices. Below is a complete breakdown of mobile original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for the three-month period ending in January:

Top Mobile OEMs

Smartphone Manufacturer

Percentage of Market, October 2010

Percentage of Market, January 2011

Samsung

24.2%

24.9%

LG

21.0%

20.8%

Motorola

17.7%

16.5%

Research In Motion

9.3%

8.6%

Apple

6.4%

7.0%

ComScore will present more mobile trend data and analysis in a free webinar on March 15.